When the NBA recently announced a deal with Stats LLC. to put SportVU tracking cameras in every stadium -- and make at least some of the collected data publicly available at NBA.com, among other places -- the Boston Celtics lost a bit of a competitive advantage.

Prior to the NBA's agreement, the Celtics had been one of 15 teams to purchase the camera systems for about $100,000 per season. They had already been collecting (and presumably making use of) data from the cameras since a little before the 2011 playoffs, when they became the league's sixth franchise to subscribe to the system. Now, taking away part of Boston's edge, all teams will have access to the same information.

Of course, the real advantage won't be (and never was) simply having additional data to examine. The key is implementing it in smarter ways than others -- and with a forward-thinking front office led by president of basketball operations Danny Ainge and assistant general manager Mike Zarren (whose nicknames include Numbers and, though he never went to the school, M.I.T.), the Celtics will certainly try to utilize the newest technology better than everyone else.

What exactly do the SportVU cameras track?

Essentially, every movement made by players, referees and the basketball -- all 25 times per second, a phenomenal rate that affords teams better information than ever before. The vast amount of data can seem overwhelming -- what does it mean, for example, that Kevin Durant ran 3.34 miles during one double overtime game? -- but certain teams have already devised systems to break it all down.

According to Lowe, the simulator took three Toronto front office employees more than half of a decade to develop. It allows the team to explore mistakes made on every possession, but, perhaps more importantly, could also point out systematic issues with how the team has been coached. Around the league, the simulator has determined, defenses should be helping with more vigor and offenses should shoot more 3-pointers -- even those, like the Houston Rockets, which have already bucked traditional measures to launch more triples. Surely, teams are also exploring other strategies, like the proper attention players should pay to the offensive glass, or which method of pick-and-roll defense tends to have the best success.

But the Raptors have found their coaching staff is not always receptive to the new information.

"When you ask coaches what's better between a 28 percent 3-point shot and a 42 percent midrange shot, they'll say the 42 percent shot," one of the team's front office executives, Alex Rucker, told Lowe. "And that's objectively false. It's wrong. If LeBron James just jacked a 3 on every single possession, that'd be an exceptionally good offense. That's a conversation we've had with our coaching staff, and let's just say they don't support that approach."

The Celtics, after hiring Brad Stevens, shouldn't have any similar problems. Stevens has always been open to as much information as he can digest. During his introductory press conference as Boston's new head coach, he excitedly mentioned the "mountain full of information" now available to him which he didn't have in college. At Butler, his prior stop, it's believed he led the first college coaching staff ever to feature someone hired specifically for statistics. That statistical guru, Drew Cannon, followed Stevens to the Celtics and will work in the team's front office.

As teams gather all this new information, finding ways to translate it all into on-court performance will (obviously) become critical. We've already seen the beginning steps of the league's transformation; this past season the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets both attempted more 3-pointers than any other team in league history. As we learn more about the most efficient shots and the best ways to defend them, systems should continue to adapt. The Rockets, for example, use a system obviously designed to shun midrange jumpers (low efficiency) in favor of threes and layups. The Spurs have long followed similar guidelines, and it's easy to guess Stevens would like to implement a similar strategy with the Celtics -- who, the last few years, generally haven't taken shots from the right places (and in a related note, have annually featured bad offenses).

Of course, knowing the proper strategy is different from being able to execute it.

“The bottom line is, I can have all the data I want to have," Stevens once said. "I have to communicate it to our players, it has to get into their minds and you have to utilize it.”

Fans won't have access to the unique ways each organization utilizes data from SportVU cameras. But the information the public receives could help refocus the way certain players are viewed.

Assists vs. good passes

For example, Rajon Rondo has led the NBA in assists for each of the past two seasons. But the new data will allow us to further examine his worth. As NBA.com's John Schuhmann wrote Monday, in 27 games tracked by SportVU cameras, Rondo had 37 "free throw assists" -- passes that don't lead directly to a basket, but still result in a teammate making at least one free throw. So in addition to Rondo's league-leading 11.1 assists average, he helped teammates get to the free throw line at least 1.4 times per game.

For more on how SportVU will help our understanding of good passers, Schuhmann continued:

Some assists are better than others, of course. We can now tell how many of Rondo’s assists lead to wide-open layups and how many lead to contested, mid-range jumpers. And if you’re really focusing on quality of the pass, the result of the shot shouldn’t matter.

So you could just count how many open shots Rondo’s passes produce. Heck, you can come up with a assist grade by figuring out the average expected field goal percentage from all his assists and potential assists, taking into account where the shots were taken and whether or not they were contested.

Before, you had to break down the film to figure out how whether a shot was contested or not. Now, SportVU can tell you right away. And it can tell you who was the guy contesting the shot.

Cool stuff.

Rondo's progression from injury

Because of the way SportVU tracks movement, we should learn plenty about Rondo's progression from ACL surgery.

As Lowe explained a couple of weeks ago, the in-game cameras will track "how fast a player runs, how often he accelerates on cuts, how often those accelerations end with him reaching top speed, and the height of a player’s release point on jump shots." So whenever Rondo comes back, we'll be able to see whether his athleticism is improving, and to what extent. According to Lowe, SportVU offers evidence that many players -- including Minnesota's Ricky Rubio, another point guard who tore his ACL -- have taken plenty of game time before returning to full agility.

Obviously, our eyes can often alert us when a player's struggling due to injury. It didn't take special cameras for us to realize Kevin Garnett wasn't the same during 2009-10; when he couldn't stop Andray Blatche or Al Harrington, we knew. But the data should help us pinpoint which movements Rondo can't fully make. The Celtics, again, have had access to this type of data for a few years, but it's just now becoming public.

Other various stats

Among many other things, as Lowe described in February, SportVU's data explains how Rondo drives to the hoop quite often (another worthy attribute not noted in box scores) and Brandon Bass rarely produces off low-post touches (not such a worthy attribute). Both of those points are easily noticed while watching the action, but the SportVU data allows us to quantify the obvious and compare Celtics to other players around the league.

It will also provide less obvious statistics. From Schuhmann's piece Monday:

Want to talk about rebounding? SportVU will tell you how many rebounding chances a player had, how many of his rebounds were contested or uncontested, and how much distance he travels for his rebounds. Reggie Evans led the league in rebounding percentage (the percentage of available rebounds that he grabbed while he was on the floor), but teammate Brook Lopez (in 18 games tracked by SportVU) actually converted a greater percentage of his rebound chances (63 percent vs. 62 percent) where he was in the vicinity of the ball. Furthermore, 54 percent of Lopez’s rebounds were contested, while only 31 percent of Evans’ were. And Lopez traveled 6.4 feet per rebound, while Evans traveled just 4.3 feet.

To basketball geeks like myself, examining these data points will be fun and hopefully enlightening. To the Celtics and 29 other franchises, the stakes are considerably higher.